Sanger Institute Research Strategy

Strategic focus on genetics

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a world leader in genomic research and in the delivery of high-quality,
large-scale resources of lasting value to the global research community. During the coming years, it aims to make a
major contribution to the understanding of gene function, similar in impact to its role in genome sequencing.

The Institute announced to staff on 7 September its plans to focus its scientific efforts, identifying genetics as the
area in which it can make the greatest - and a unique - contribution. This experimental focus will be concentrated on
global studies of natural genetic variation in humans and pathogens, and experimental variation of genome sequence in
the model organisms, mouse and zebrafish, as well as pathogens.

Genetic studies allow the genome sequence to be connected directly to organismal phenotype. These will yield the
richest set of scientific results and resources and capitalize most effectively on the Institute's unique skills in
high-throughput science, sequencing and informatics.

Genetic analysis at the Sanger Institute will cover humans, mouse, zebrafish and pathogens - this breadth of analysis
is a strength of the Institute. Moreover, the programmes will develop synergistic and coherent themes: for example,
pathogens can be used to probe mammalian gene function, and thus research in pathogen-human interactions will help to
prioritise genes to be studied experimentally.

Where we achieve successes in disease gene discovery in human genetics we will seek to develop these findings rapidly
by replicating the genetic change in model organisms. The zebrafish and mouse programmes will work together to perform
knockouts in parallel in both species.

The vision and scale of our model organism programmes has been recognized by international funding agencies and the
Institute has put in place clone resources and other technologies to generate mutants by gene targeting at a very high
rate.

In human genetics, the Institute is already targeting medically relevant genes in conditions such as cancer and
metabolic disease. In these studies variation in patient samples is captured and analysis of the same genes in control
populations is used to assess disease-associated variation. The Institute also made a major investment in our
genotyping capabilities, which are world class.

The Institute has international recognition and leadership in pathogen genomics. Genetic analysis in pathogen research,
for example malaria, will be the overriding consideration, through focused programmes that interrelate to achieve the
maximum impact.

The refined strategy is one that fits with the infrastructure of the Institute and will swiftly capitalize on annotated
genome sequence. Combining key model organisms, pathogens and human variation, the Institute's research will use our
skills in high-throughput science to bridge between species, yielding rich interpretation of gene function. Integration
across research programmes and standardization of data outputs will enhance our rapid delivery of data and resources,
empowering the research community globally.

" In its 13-year history, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has been a leader in some of the world's most
important biomedical research projects. Our key strength in high-throughput research allied to our focus on
genetics will yield data and resources of comparable lasting value over the next five years. "

Allan Bradley, Director

The Institute has led the approach that placing data and resources into the public domain is the most efficient
mechanism to speed biomedical research. Our ethos will continue: raw unprocessed data, assembled/curated data and
biological resources will be made rapidly and freely available.

Unquestionably, a full compendium of gene function that has been experimentally validated will provide a knowledge base
that will identify many new therapeutic avenues for human genetic or infectious disease.

In its 13-year history, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has been a leader in some of the world's most important
biomedical research projects: the Institute's management and its advisors are determined that the new focus will
strengthen our ability to make lasting contributions to the process of transforming genomic research into biomedical
understanding.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which receives the majority of its funding from the Wellcome Trust, was founded in 1992. The Institute is responsible for the completion of the sequence of approximately one-third of the human genome as well as genomes of model organisms and more than 90 pathogen genomes. In October 2006, new funding was awarded by the Wellcome Trust to exploit the wealth of genome data now available to answer important questions about health and disease.

Websites

The Wellcome Trust and Its Founder

The Wellcome
Trust is the most diverse biomedical research charity in the
world, spending about £450 million every year both in the UK
and internationally to support and promote research that will
improve the health of humans and animals. The Trust was established
under the will of Sir Henry
Wellcome, and is funded from a private endowment, which is
managed with long-term stability and growth in mind.